Various applications, such as applications requiring large components, often involve splicing honeycomb cores. The resulting spliced assemblies may be referred to as splices. The need for splicing occurs, for example, when initial structures have a limited size. Splices may be used for various aircraft applications, such as interior aircraft panels, padding devices design to absorb impact, and other like applications.
Honeycomb cores may be spliced using various adhesive. For example, cells of two honeycomb cores may be aligned, and these structures may be pushed into contact with an adhesive layer disposed between the structures. When curing this adhesive layer, the gap between the two structures may change, for example, because of expansion of the adhesive layer. Supporting the two structures may be challenging especially when the adhesive layer and the structures are covered by additional components, such as face sheets. For example, conventional solutions of using external removable supports do not allow integration of the face sheet into the adhesive curing process. The curing has to be performed without the face sheet. After the curing, these external supports are removed, and the face sheet is added and cured in a separate process. Another conventional approach is based on inserting a small piece of a honeycomb core across the splice interface to bridge the interface. However, this approach does not work well for many types of honeycomb cores, such as NOMEX® cores. When the bridging honeycomb piece is inserted over the two honeycomb cores, it shears the walls of these two honeycomb cores and may cause the overall splice to crush because of this wall cutting.
There is a need for new types of splices comprising adhered and supported honeycomb cores and new methods of forming thereof, in particular, for sandwiched honeycomb cores.